Bryce vs the End of the Line
by Course Jester
Summary: Everyone has a breaking point. One-shot.


**Bryce vs. the End of the Road  
**

His fingers automatically dialed his cell phone, leaving Bryce Larkin's thoughts free to be somewhere else. He had been doing a lot of thinking lately; about choices long since made, paths long since chosen, and brutal facts too easily overlooked. Willingly overlooked. Bitter irony seemed to be everywhere these days, and he thought that the biggest irony of all was that it had all gone unnoticed for so long by someone who was trained to notice everything. The training - maybe that was the reason. After all, an appreciation for irony was just another distraction an agent couldn't afford, right? They had to beat that out of you just like everything else. Bringing his wandering mind back into the moment, he pressed send, and as the call connected he felt a flutter of nerves in his stomach. He glanced at the well-worn square of thin plastic in his other hand and gripped it tightly, reminding himself of what had to be done. Forcing down the uncharacteristic nervousness, he spoke coolly and clearly.

"Peter Aldridge for the director."

"Hold one moment, Mr. Aldridge." Director Graham's assistant knew that Mr. Aldridge's calls to the director's private line were to be put through right away, with no questions asked.

It was early in Washington, but Bryce knew that Graham would already be in his corner office at Langley. Graham was always in his office. As he waited for the director to pick up, he listened to the tiny hum in the secure line. He had talked on secure lines for years, but he had never really paid any attention to that little hum; in fact, he would only have noticed its absence. Now it shouted at him, reminding him of the necessities of the life he lived, and how ruthlessly they twisted even the most ordinary things. Nothing was as it seemed, no one trusted anyone, and the consequences of any action could be enormous. Even a simple phone call could get people killed if overheard by the wrong person. God, he was tired of it all.

"You're not due to report for another 72 hours, Mr. Aldridge." The director was always one for the niceties of conversation.

Bryce steeled himself before he replied. "I heard you have a guest." A simple statement of fact, without emotion. He was surprised at how much effort that took.

"I'm not sure how you know that my mother-in-law is in town, Mr. Aldridge, but it had been a year since she last visited and my wife was getting angry. I can stare down an al Qaida cell leader without blinking, but my wife's temper scares me. How exactly does this interest you?"

"Stop it, Graham. No games, no attempts at diversion. And call me by my real name. Since this will be our last little chat, I thought we might try something new and tell the truth."

There was the briefest of silences before Graham regained his composure. _Last chat?_ What the hell was Larkin talking about? The director had a feeling that this was not going to be a conversation he wanted to have, especially at 7 a.m. with no coffee in his system yet.

"Okay...Larkin. We'll play this your way."

"Nice of you. You should have known I'd find out about Chuck. I may be dead, but I'm not _that_ dead."

So that was it. Graham shook his head, wishing for the millionth time that he had never heard of Chuck Bartowski. "You know I had no choice, Larkin. We feared his identity had been compromised. What's worse for Chuck, protective custody or being captured by Fulcrum? Tortured? Sold to God only knows who? And when they were done with him, maybe a bullet in the back of his head? And think of how many people could have been put in danger when he spilled our secrets. I know you consider him a friend, but you need to be a professional first. You have to consider the larger picture. What else could have been done?"

The director paused for a moment to consider the computer nerd who had caused him so much trouble over the last two years. What was it about Bartowski that could compromise even his best agents? Graham had had this same conversation with Walker six weeks ago, to no good end. She was still an emotional mess, and he didn't know when or even if she might be useful again.

Bryce, however, remained cool, and was ready for the director's argument. He didn't buy that reasoning when he tried to use it to excuse his own actions, so he sure as hell wasn't going to accept it from Graham. He immediately fired back. "So you had no choice, right? Just like every other time. ' The Greater Good.' 'The lesser of two evils.' 'You can't make an omelet without breaking a few eggs.' Pick any cliché you want, Graham - they're all bullshit."

Graham was a little taken aback by the heat in Larkin's voice. He had to get his agent calmed down and fast, so he tried to appeal to the training, the professionalism. "Put aside the emotion and think, Larkin. You know this had to happen sooner or later. You know it was the right call. You're only reacting this way because it's Chuck."

"Of course I'm reacting this way because it's Chuck. You know why, Graham? Because you can ignore a stranger. When bad things happen to people you don't know you can push it away. You shake your head sympathetically, think 'Gee, that's a shame', and then move right along. It had to be someone I cared about to make me understand. And the odds on that happening were pretty long, seeing as how there are precious few people in this world that I actually care about anymore. But one of those few is currently sitting in your private little dungeon, so here we are."

This was going south, and too quickly. The director tried to turn the tables. "Help me to understand your reaction, Larkin. After all, you're the one who got Chuck involved in all this in the first place. You weren't so worried about your good buddy Chuck when you sent him the Intersect images."

But Bryce was ready for that one, too. "You're absolutely right, Graham. I didn't think about Chuck at all. I only thought about what I needed to complete my mission. Your training taught me to be selfish, to do whatever I had to do regardless of the consequences for anyone else. Maybe it wasn't all from the training; maybe the training just reinforced the selfishness that was already there. I'll never be sure, because I've learned not to look too closely at my own actions. But this time, I didn't do it – you did. So I took a good, long look at the whole ugly thing.

"Remember what you told me way back at the beginning, when I was about to go under for the first time? You said that I would have to do questionable things, and that even worse, I would have to do them in a split second. I'd have to make the ugliest of choices without the luxury of time to consider them. You told me that as hard as those choices might be, and as...distasteful...as I might find some of the things I had to do, I could get through it if I just remembered what I was fighting for. Who I was trying to protect. I never told you, Graham, but I used to think about that speech all the time. It got me through some bad spots, because I thought that no matter how deep the muck I had to wade through, there was something solid under it all to support me. But now I'm not sure if that support was ever really there."

"Who are we protecting, Graham? What are we really doing? Don't tell me that we're protecting innocent Americans, because if we are, you wouldn't have sent Chuck to his own private Siberia. He's as innocent an American and as good a person as there is, and we've deprived him of almost every right guaranteed to him by our own Constitution simply because it was more convenient for us that way. And knowing that I'm the one who put him in that position makes me feel like I'm turning into the very thing I'm supposed to be fighting against. It makes me look back at all the other things I've done, all the other innocent people I've used in the name of the "Greater Good". And let me tell you, Graham, when you open up a can that big, you can drown in all the worms that come spilling out."

"Look, Larkin, I know this can't be easy. I understand all the questions you're asking. At some point or another, every agent goes through-"

"No, Graham. Not every agent goes through this. You tell me if any other agent has ever been responsible for having his best - his only - friend locked up in a CIA bunker for the rest of his life. You know what the biggest irony of all is, Graham? I really thought I was protecting Chuck when I got him kicked out of Stanford. I honestly believed that I was doing what was best for him, even if it hurt both of us like hell at the time. I thought I was being a good friend. But apparently it only took me five years to get over that friendship, not to mention any remaining shreds of decency I had as a person, because I can tell you right now that I never thought for a second about the consequences for Chuck when I sent him that email."

"I'm done, Graham. I'm out. There is no lie I can tell myself to get past this. Lies don't come that big."

Bryce paused for a deep breath, then continued. He had to finish it. "I know you're recording this, so let me state for the record that I have no hostile intentions. I am not cooperating with any foreign governments or anti-American organizations, nor am I under any sort of duress. I will keep all my secrets. I am not a rogue agent. What I am, quite frankly, is used up."

Graham wasn't sure how to respond to the honest emotion, the sadness in Larkin's voice. He knew all about the big can of worms Larkin mentioned; every agent had one tucked away in a dark place and prayed that it never came open. Graham's was so big by now that he could install a diving board on it. Wrenching his thoughts back to the conversation, he changed tack again. "Well, then. Have you picked a spot to settle down for your golden years?"

"Australia. Bora Bora. Detroit. A tent in your backyard. You just never know with me, do you?"

"What I know is that I have to come after you."

"Feel free. We both know you'll never find me. I'm too good. That's the very reason you have me do what I do. Or rather, what I did. Don't worry too much. Graham. It won't take you long to find someone shiny and new to take my place, and they'll continue doing your dirty work without considering why. But me, I'm finished."

The line went dead; Larkin was gone.

Graham hung up the phone and stared silently out of his seventh floor window. He didn't know how to begin processing this. If the director told the truth, he would have to admit that he hadn't been sleeping too well the last six weeks, either. Chuck really was an innocent, a nice guy, and Larkin had hit the nail squarely on the head when he said that the CIA should be fighting for people like Chuck, not sticking them in secure facilities. And it was also true that the nerd had held up better than the director could have possibly hoped over the last two years, making up for his complete lack of fieldcraft with intelligence and more courage than anyone had counted on. It was just a no-win situation. Graham hadn't been lying when he laid out what would happen to Chuck if he fell into enemy hands, and Larkin knew it.

Bryce Larkin. Losing him was the hardest hit to take. It had hurt like hell when he thought he had lost Larkin to Fulcrum, and he had been relieved and happy – yes, happy – to get him back. Contrary to what his agents thought, the director wasn't devoid of feelings. That was the big secret to this damned job – you had to have a heart. You had to care. The director is often the final word, making decisions that send people to their deaths. If you don't care, then those people just become things, nothing more than expensively trained chess pieces to be moved and sacrificed at will, and then replaced by more expendable pieces. You had to have a heart to understand the sacrifice, to make sure the prize was worth the price. That's why he liked Bryce so much. He was one of the best deep cover agents Graham had ever seen, but more than that, he had heart. Graham had often thought that some time down the road, if Bryce came back in from the cold intact, he might sit in this very chair. Because having made the sacrifices himself, Bryce would understand and care. It was just dumb luck that circumstances had forced Graham to sacrifice someone Larkin cared for just a little too much.

Shaking himself from his musings, the director buzzed his assistant for some long overdue coffee, then picked up the phone to make the first of several calls. Graham didn't really consider Larkin to be a threat; he thought the agent was on the level when he said he wouldn't cause any trouble. But the CIA generally doesn't like deep cover operatives disappearing into the fog, especially ones that have blown up Company resources in the past. Certain people had to be informed, and a search would then begin. He would have to attempt to find Larkin - he simply knew too much to be allowed to walk away uncontested - but he agreed with the agent's assessment that efforts to find him would not succeed. He really was that good. The active search would last long enough to keep up appearances, then shift to a more passive mode. All stations and networks would stay on alert, and if Larkin was careless enough to try to use a CIA asset or contact he would be brought in, but Graham knew that would never happen. Larkin had been off the grid for too long, knew all the tricks. Damn. He half-slammed the receiver down in its cradle, smashing his thumb in the process. The pain provided a release for all of his pent-up frustration, and the resulting stream of loud obscenities convinced Graham's assistant to turn around just shy of his door. Apparently, the last thing the director needed right now was caffeine.

After ending the call, Bryce took a quick look around the mostly empty terminal. Seeing he was unobserved, he powered off the phone and removed the battery, then discreetly tossed them into separate garbage cans. It was a sterile phone, but he had learned that you could never be too careful. Sighing at old habits he knew he would never lose, he looked down at the thin square of plastic that he had held onto through the entire conversation with Graham. He had accidentally creased it, but that didn't really matter, since the old floppy's data had probably long since been corrupted. It was just a memento, the only bit of his past that he allowed himself to keep. To anyone else it would appear to be just a useless old floppy disc containing a stupid old game; an antique, really. No one would ever know how much of himself Bryce had saved on that disk. It was all that was left of his pre-CIA days, all that remained of a Bryce Larkin that he could barely remember but missed a lot. It stored his few surviving memories of a time when the weight of the world didn't seem to hang on his every decision. But mostly, it held all he had left of Chuck. He stared at the faded, handwritten label, and his eyes misted over for only a second as he remembered the last time in his life when he knew what it felt like to have and, more importantly, be a true friend.

After a last glance at Chuck's messy scrawl, Bryce carefully stowed the disk in his carry-on bag, and as he walked toward the gate he wondered if he might be able to dig up an old TRS-80 in Bora Bora.

___**A/N – This is my first fanfic of any kind, ever. Actually, it's my first fic of any kind, ever. As such, any and all reviews and criticisms are welcome. This was just an idea that hit me – we all wonder what Chuck's imprisonment might do to Sarah or even Casey, but I wondered what it might do to Bryce.**_

___**My favorite Chuck fanfic author may notice my appropriation of Bryce's cover name from one of his stories. Just a humble tip of the cap, sir. Keep the good stuff coming - it's still a long way till Fall.**_


End file.
